Philip Carlson
The Actors Center Journal Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2009
Publisher’s Piece
The other night, I went to the opening of “The Royal Family” on Broadway. I was an agent for over thirty years and openings used to feel like work because they were. I frequently had a client or two or three on stage (this, of course, was a good thing) who almost always needed attention, or shepherding, or reassuring at the party. The other night was just fun. At the party, my date, who was in the show and whose guest I was, asked if I wanted to meet Rosemary Harris. Well, of course I wanted to meet Rosemary Harris. My friend introduced us and I told the great lady I had loved her since The Disenchanted. “Oh my,” she said, taking me in, “you must have been a babe in arms.” Well, I hadn’t been. I was seventeen when I saw her and Jason Robards and George Grizzard in that play, which has never been revived (so I suppose it isn’t such a swell play), but I remember the three of them as if I had seen it last week. They were beyond swell. Especially her. Especially that first sight of her, in silhouette, behind a scrim, laughing. May I say: Wow. I got chills. I still do.
The Royal Family originally opened in 1927 (the day after Showboat—that must have been some season) and revived, again on Broadway, in 1975 (with Rosemary Harris playing the daughter of the woman she is playing now). It is a play famously based on the Barrymores (John was amused, Ethel rather offended), concerning the self-obsessed comings and goings of three generations of a theatrical family named Cavendish who live together lavishly in a duplex apartment complete with servants, fireplaces that work, a grand piano and furniture and carpeting fit for, well, royalty in the East Fifties in New York City. The Cavendishes do a play every season, sometimes together, sometimes separately. They live largely and grandly, they have affairs, they sail to Europe and return in time for rehearsals of next season’s show, reporters camp outside their building when they behave scandalously, they are generous to the less fortunate, they are selfish with each other, they get into the most awful jams but when curtain time rolls around, they drop everything and head off to work. They are stars of the theatre. They were rare birds. Today they are dodo birds. They are dinosaurs.
They were not dinosaurs when the play was first produced. To hear them talk of their devotion to their craft, their underlying love for each other and the people with whom they share a profession, the pain they cause those who do not share their profession, the missed birthdays, the certain knowledge that any amount of hardship is worth it in the end, so long as they can be there where that curtain goes up, to eavesdrop on that kind of passion is to witness life as it is no longer lived.
There are no stars of the theatre today. I am talking about actors who will guarantee an audience for at least a season. The original production of “The Royal Family” (which starred Haidee Wright and Otto Kruger) was a gigantic hit and it ran for nine months. In those days, long enough for a properly produced play to make back its investment and a handsome profit if not, perhaps, make a killing. These days, producers are after a killing. And rather than stars of the theatre to assure us of a stirring evening in the theatre, today we have celebrities from other media to excite our curiosity.
At seventeen, when I tramped down from school to see a weekend of theatre (Friday night, Saturday matinee, Saturday evening, Sunday matinee (thank God for off-Broadway with its Sunday matinees, such a boon for those of us who had come so far), I knew I was going to see great acting at every play I went to. And I did. I knew I would have my breath taken away. That was why I came. Even off-Broadway? Ah, yes, can we discuss Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson at The Orpheum? Today we are allowed to spend a hundred plus dollars to see someone who might have been on the cover of Vanity Fair and who might look like a million bucks in or out of their clothes, but they are not going to take our breath away. I promise you.
Elsewhere in this issue, I try to discover why we no longer have actors for whom it is worth driving four hours just to see walk across the stage—as was once said of Lynne Fontanne. Theatre stars were stars because they were brilliant actors. I mean brilliant. Your jaw dropped, your heart stopped, you realized why you were alive. In “Where Have You Gone, Joseph Schildkraut?,” I try to examine why actors may not be delving as deeply as they used to do. Editorially, I would just like to take a moment and howl about what we are missing as a result. David Mamet wrote a play called A Life in the Theatre. Does anyone even have a life in the theatre anymore? Theatre stars used to have a new play every season. As a teenager, when I came here I saw giants in something new every year, and worth traveling four hours to see.
Growing up, I had a treasured book called The Passionate Playgoer (edited by George Oppenheimer). I still have it, though not the dust jacket. I used to pore over that book for hours, dreaming of the day when I would live in New York and actually be a passionate playgoer. And I did and I was—or a time. I confess, I am no longer am. I go but no longer passionately. Do you? I go warily. Once in awhile, I see great acting. I am sure you do, too. And I thank God (or Thespis) for those actors who deliver the passion I have been longing to see but those actors are exceptions and none of them are stars. I know “star” can be a dirty word, in some circles, anyway. But when I say “star” I mean someone who is so excellent, so thrilling, so inspiring that his or her right to be billed above the title is unquestioned. Today it’s negotiated. When I was a babe in arms, or just past, and the lights went down in the theatre, I was bursting with anticipation. I could hardly wait for the magic to happen. Well, I haven’t felt like that in awhile. And it’s got nothing to do with my being grown up now. There’s no magic to anticipate anymore. Do you think? Can the magic be returned? Or am I a dinosaur?